THE SENSORY NERVATURE 65 



eruptive displays have been moulded on the structural 

 lines of the cutaneous or peripheral nervature anatomical 

 necessities, therefore, determine their manner and method 

 of evolution and development, as they must be acknow- 

 ledged to do in every definite diseased condition. 



The terminal distribution of the peripheral sensory 

 nervature being thus generally more or less traceable, 

 lends itself to the more or less graphic illustration of the 

 "condition of things" within the central nervous system, 

 and publishes, for the information of those able to trans- 

 late the messages, what is transpiring in these cryptic 

 regions, and what response, if any, to return. 



The naked-eye features of the skin generally, and those 

 relating to the sensory nerve terminals particularly, as we 

 have remarked, are continually undergoing change as age 

 advances, each phase of life being characterised by its own 

 particular features ; thus its creasing or wrinkling, its 

 smoothness or roughness, its own pigmentation and that 

 of its appendages, with many other less prominent, are 

 rhythmically responding to the plastic and colouring or 

 de-colouring touch of the "hand of time," and "telling 

 the tale of life," whether it may be smooth and joyous, 

 rough and careworn, or wild and tumultuous. 



The truth of these observations must be tested by the 

 study of the living subject, however, because post-mortem 

 changes frequently obliterate those which have been the 

 work of a lifetime, thus smoothing out the grosser mark- 

 ings of time, throwing an air of peace and rest over 

 countenances which have long been strange to them, and 

 leaving, it may be, a uniform pallor alone to mark, or mask, 

 the history of the individual. 



The deeper and unseen relationships of the peripheral 

 nerve terminals, to the well-defined and anatomically traced 

 nerve trunks and fibres, have an important bearing on the 

 surface disposition of the terminal nerve markings, inas- 

 much as every such marking, when it has become the 

 scene of eruptive phenomena, will, on being traced back 

 to its parent nerve, reveal the path by which the neural 

 discharge has been effected, and give a clue to the discovery 

 of its true etiology and nature. The cutaneous sensory 

 nerve terminals seem to be disposed on and in the surface 



